Synopsis

A seaside school. In the corridor stands the principal, beloved of the high-spirited youngsters. Gazing at a picture of a whale drawn as a child, the head teacher is swept away with sentiment into a flashback from the past. Just then, on the ocean horizon...

Once again Yamamura Koji uses is talents to teach us to conserve rather than be greedy. One of his lightest work, I feel it is also one of his best in terms of the animation and especially because of the marvelous transitions which are so very unique and wonderful to his style!

The characters definitely have a similar look and feel to those from Inaka Isha except they drawn three shades lighter and have had the world's weight taken off their shoulders. Gone are worries of freezing Soviet-Europe and sickness - this is a film about saving, not trading lives.

This is a truly
Yamamura Koji film if there ever was one and while there isn't a trace of Noh in it, it almost feels MORE like him because of it. I feel as though I could really appreciate his animation style in this piece because it was such a simple message given with such a simple delivery: Please save the whales.

Okay. This is a short made for greenpeace about why we should save the whales because they once saved us. Pretty presumptuous and annoying message (Worthwhile/good messages[1] should be easy to understand. Re-read what I said...what the fuck, right?) It almost makes me want to begin eating meat.

But the animation--Koji Yamamura's style-- is nice and it's really hard to become irritated with something in the span of two minutes. So it's not so bad.

If I repeatedly watched it 3 or 4 times I would definitely lower the score 2-3 points.
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See _Princess Mononoke_ if you're really into this stuff. That one is much more enjoyable
and has much nicer pictures to look at.

[1] Well they should, like, be applicable to everyone too... The whole metaphor is kind of bullshit. I think the target audience is Japanese people who ate whales due to starvation ??? I'm not really cultured enough to know if that demographic is big or not. I don't care. I've never even seen a fucking whale.